You don’t have to have a relationship on the rocks to wake up with that Sunday morning mood, but it definitely doesn’t hurt. More often than not, a relationship–or lack thereof–is why you woke up that way Sunday morning in the first place. Indeed, a relationship-on-the-rocks has oft been the subject of many a Sunday morning song. It’s obviously a universal feeling, but one that takes on extra valence for LDS listeners, who must grapple not only with the whole I-don’t-want-to-die-alone feeling common to humanity, but also the added pressure of eternal marriage, of how “In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees; And in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; And if he does not, he cannot obtain it” (Doctrine and Covenants 131:1-3).
Hinging one’s Eternal Progression to one’s ability to score a date in their awkward 20s can feel downright cruel–and all the older-married folks’ reassurances about how you can still get married in the next life can feel downright tone-deaf at best, patronizing and condescending at worst. Seriously, I say this one as a married dude myself who didn’t get hitched till a little later in life: the Church does an absolutely atrocious job of managing and ministering to its single adults, who by all rights should be treated as the rock and strength of the Church. These are our strongest, most faithful members.
For reals, these are the members who receive every signal subtle and unsubtle (as when a 31-year-old is unceremoniously booted from a Singles Ward, to brave it in an indifferent Family Ward) that they are not wanted, who are given every reason to just drift away and seek out a scene that does not stigmatize single 30-year-olds, but who still somehow just shrug it all off and keep attending Church anyways. What deep wells of faith, what profound religious conversion, is necessary to keep going in the face of all that indifference! (As Elie Wiesel said, the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.) Older Singles are not a problem for the Church; the Church is a problem for Older Singles, which does not value its strongest members like it should.
But I digress. I simply wish to note that when feeling all this overwhelming pressure for Temple marriage, it can frankly feel like a break, even a relief, to listen to a break-up song without all that eternal baggage.
Anyways: First up this week, a pair of Sunday songs from blonde bombshells on the short end of a heartbreak, beginning with Blondie’s 1978 hit, “Sunday Girl.”
From their breakthrough album Parallel Lines, frontwoman and Punk icon Debbie Harry sings about “a girl from a lonely street/Cold as ice cream but still as sweet,” who learns that her “guy is with a different girl,” which, you know, ouch. She had been waiting all week for him to come around (“Hurry up, hurry up and wait/I stay away all week and still I wait”); but now that week has passed, Sunday has come back around and our souls are not saved, and she’s forced to face facts. (As Jimmy Eat World sang, “What you wish for, won’t come true/live with that, with that,” which is also a hell of a song to listen to morning after a bad date).
The song itself is a study in contrasts: an upbeat, whimsical melody (which includes a charmingly superfluous rendition of the verses in French), juxtaposed against the resigned melancholy of the Sunday Girl after a solid week of useless heartbreak.
But there is no such passive resignation in No Doubt’s 1995 hit “Sunday Morning.”
The fifth single from their monster-selling debut Tragic Kingdom, frontwoman Gwen Stefani turns the tables on her ex on one of those quintessential Sunday mornings. After briefly bemoaning how she was a “Sappy pathetic little me,” she now taunts the man who broke her heart with “you looked like me on Sunday,” “You’re trying my shoes on for a change,” “now you’re the parasite,” “now you’re looking like I used to,” and most bitingly, “you want me badly/Because you cannot have me.” It’s a kiss-off song in the Gloria Gaynor “I Will Survive” tradition, the fantasy of shooting down your ex when they finally come crawling back to you (and the incredible background-detail here is that it was No Doubt’s own bassist, Tony Kanal, who was purportedly the ex-boyfriend in question–which, I gotta say, did he just know that this album was going to sell 16 million copies, to put up with her unloading on him each and every song? The mind reels!).
The key detail here, though, is when she sings, “you looked like me on Sunday.” For even as she glories in her ex crawling back to her, she can’t help but recognize that Sunday morning mood in him, too–once you’ve experienced yourself, you see it in others. That’s what sets this song apart from most other kiss-off songs: there’s still a hint of sympathy for the ex, an ever-so-slight empathy, a feeling of common kinship, even as she rightfully celebrates finally finding the strength to move on herself. As ever, the Sunday Morning mood is universal enough to cross all boundaries and embrace all peoples–yes, even our exes.